New Ecologies for the Twenty-First Century

In The Geographies of Social Movements Ulrich Oslender proposes a critical place perspective to examine the activism of black communities in the lowland rain forest of Colombia's Pacific Coast region. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in and around the town of Guapi, Oslender examines how the work of local community councils, which have organized around newly granted ethnic and land rights since the early 1990s, is anchored to space and place. Exploring how residents' social relationships are entangled with the region's rivers, streams, swamps, rain, and tides, Oslender argues that this "aquatic space"—his conceptualization of the mutually constitutive relationships between people and their rain forest environment—provides a local epistemology that has shaped the political process. Oslender demonstrates that social mobilization among Colombia's Pacific Coast black communities is best understood as emerging out of their place-based identity and environmental imaginaries. He argues that the critical place perspective proposed accounts more fully for the multiple, multiscalar, rooted, and networked experiences within social movements.

"Oslender masterfully ties different threads together to form a compelling argument about the importance of place and space in charting social movement. . . . I cannot help but think of the immense value of this approach for understanding the present U.S. political situation. . . . In a cultural moment that seems increasingly punctuated with high-visibility social movements—I am thinking of Standing Rock and of the Women’s March, for example—Oslender offers a new, more nuanced way to situate our understandings of resistance and movement." — Kourtney Kinsel, AmeriQuests

"Ulrich Oslender has produced a significant contribution to the literature on place, space, and social movements. This manuscript convincingly argues for a critical and multi-scalar examination of human and non-human entanglements through his concept of aquatic space." — Maurice Rafael Magaña, Anthropological Forum

"With this carefully researched, well-written examination of issues facing Colombia's Pacific lowlands in the twenty-first century, Ulrich Oslender offers two important contributions: first, the elaboration of an innovative, theoretical template inspired by the region's unique geography as a lens to analyze developments that have and are occuring there; and second, a history of the region that reviews its development from colonial times to present." — Jane M. Rausch, Journal of Global South Studies

"Oslender’s book is an important contribution to our understanding of social movements, and particularly of Afro-Colombian social mobilization. He shows that traditional accounts of social movements pay attention to their scripts, their documents, and their struggles." — Farid Samir Benavides Vanegas, Left History

“[The Geographies of Social Movements] effectively describes the cultural, spiritual, biographic and mnemonic connections between people and place and how they shape the social movement politics effecting sociocultural change." — Marcela Velasco, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe

"With this deeply considered ethnography, Ulrich Oslender has expanded [available] literature and demonstrated how much of the Pacific coast story remains to be told. He has also initiated a more complex mapping of the region than that currently available in the general literature." — Joshua Rosenthal, The Americas

"We can learn from how Oslender adds a critical place perspective to theories of social movements. He indeed demonstrates that concepts of space and place are central to thinking about how people mobilize as political collectives." — Allison Koch, Environment and Society

"Ulrich Oslender makes a clear and forceful argument for using a critical place perspective. The Geographies of Social Movements is an outstanding piece of work; with its open and inviting writing and its broad overview of the literature about social movements, it will be a welcome text for introducing anthropology, sociology, and geography students to the dilemmas of 'development' and the difficulties of people who live in marginalized spaces. Oslender's grasp of the history of Colombia and its internal political divisions is beyond reproach." — John Agnew, author of Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power

"Ulrich Oslender makes a powerful argument about the importance of place-based identities and processes for understanding social movements, as well as about the need for grassroots ethnography to complement the more typical focus on literature and leaders. His close examination of the way that community councils were formed in Colombia's Pacific Coast region is an important and little-studied aspect of the Colombian black social movement and provides a vital way to understand political mobilization and social movements in general." — Peter Wade, author of Race and Ethnicity in Latin America

Ulrich Oslender is Associate Professor of Geography at Florida International University and the coeditor of Bridging Scholarship and Activism: Reflections from the Frontlines of Collaborative Research.